“Here’s where I’ll say one thing I dislike about this one, and then we can talk about other stuff.
The slow motion chase.
Okay, this isn’t how space works.
Space is being treated like the ocean in this movie: a smaller, nimbler boat can outrun a large battleship because it uses less power to move more quickly.
In space, with no resistance whatsoever, you can have a ship of any size that can maneuver exactly like a small ship. Hence the Borg traveling in cubes. That wouldn’t work in an atmosphere, but in space, a cube is just as mobile as a sleek ship.
So this whole thing is predicated on the idea that somehow hitting the gas on this large ship is wasteful or not workable, and sending out smaller ships is also no good, so…we just sort of wait.
I get the concept and that the slow-mo chase is meant to keep tension in the movie when there is none, but in my opinion, it’s just screenwriting that lives on the idea that nobody will pay attention to stuff like that.
Now, I also understand the common argument against this would be something like, “You’re complaining about realism in a Star War?”
My thing is, at some point, something has to matter. Something has to be realistic or at least within the rules of the fictional universe in order to have any sort of reason to follow this story.
The Last Jedi does not agree with the “something has to matter” idea because Princess Leia flies, there’s a silly Las Vegas planet, all of our characters chase pointless goals, the baddie is just dispatched with little fanfare, Phasma and Finn never get a showdown, BB8 can drive a big robot…
I think it can work to give me something other than what I expect, but this movie does it at every opportunity, which makes it less special as the movie goes on.
But the bigger problem is that what we get is not better than what we expected. It’s okay to surprise your audience this way, but you have to give them something better, more interesting, more meaningful, more emotional, more something than what they expected.
Surprise me with a pizza when I thought I was eating a peanut butter sandwich for dinner. Don’t surprise me with a PBJ when I thought I was getting pizza. Know what I mean?
Ultimately, it makes the movie feel mean spirited to me. Like the movie is made to sneer at Star Wars fanboys. I think that’s a fine thing to make, but maybe not such a great Star Wars movie to make. “